This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
Books | Education | Important | Learning | Mind | Need | Training | Learn | Think | Value |
We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
Beauty | Compassion | Despair | Dogma | Faith | Fear | Hope | Ignorance | Joy | Learning | Love | Optimism | Pessimism | Reason | Selfishness | Sin | Truth | Beauty |
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
Once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.
We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Education has become such a complicated and overregulated activity that learning is regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do... But reluctance to learning cannot be attributed to the brain. Learning is one of the brain's primary functions, its constant concern, and we become restless and frustrated if there is no learning to be done. We are all capable of high and unsuspected learning accomplishments without effort.
Education | Effort | Intelligence | Learning |
The Ten Commandments, and religious principles in general, simply tell you what to do. Learning to think morally (i.e., philosophically) helps you to discover both what to do, and why.
Learning | Principles | Think |
Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.
We suppress the child’s curiosity (for example, there are questions one should not ask), and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic difficulties.
Antonio Machado, fully Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz
Wherever learning breeds specialists, the sum of human culture is enhanced thereby. That is the illusion and consolation of specialists.
Consolation | Culture | Illusion | Learning |
Thus with love. They err who think that they have but to learn about love, if they are to come by it. And that man hoodwinks himself who drifts through life hoping to be vanquished by love, learning by fitful fevers to enjoy brief stirrings of the heart, ever thinking to encounter that supreme fever which will enkindle his whole life; though, by reason of his pettiness of mind and the insignificance of the hill he has climbed, it can be but a short-lived exaltation of his heart. Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb... For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance.
Day | Heart | Insignificance | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mind | Reason | Thinking | Will | Child | Learn | Think |
It is easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language.
Language | Learning | Listening | Music | Understand |
Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters and musicians.
Aesthetic | Art | Genius | Learning | Little | Respect | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |